A Book A Week

 "Is there anything lucky about surviving a tragedy?"

What's a book that has been sitting on your shelf for years? We're all guilty of it. We buy the next must-read book and proceed to not read it. I've lost count of all the hyped books that I've purchased on a whim and subsequently ignored. Noah Hawley's Before the Fall is one such book. I spent a day last week cleaning my bookshelves and piles, sorting through each title that I own. I had simply run out of room to keep them all. As Hawley's book came up, I decided that if I was going to once again keep it, I would need to actually read it. 

Scott Burroughs is a down on his luck painter who is about to stumble into one of the most tragic events of his life. By sheer chance, he's recently befriended the wife of a wealthy media mogul, and she's invited him to travel on a private plane with her family and a few of their affluent friends. The short trip to New York from Martha's Vinyard is nothing out of the ordinary. Scott is thankful to have a way to travel to the city, especially as he has an important meeting with a gallery there the next day. Sixteen minutes into the flight the unthinkable happens. The plane nosedives directly into the ocean, killing everyone but Scott and the young son of the media mogul. 

In the aftermath of the disaster, Scott is hailed as a hero. He found the child floating in the ocean amongst the wreckage, and swam the countless miles, the boy in hand, to shore. The media frenzy begins. It seems as if every reporter and news camera in the world is trying to get Scott's side of the story. For his part, the painter elects to hide away, secluding himself from the hype. But then the questions begin. Why was Scott on the plane in the first place? Why did the plane go down? Is it a mere coincidence that an aircraft carrying so many influential people crashed into the sea?

After finally reading Noah Hawley's Before the Fall, I honestly regret having taken so long to get to it. His masterful novel tells the story of one man dealing with the guilt of surviving a tragedy. Simultaneously, Hawley dissects the lives of each of the other individuals on an ill-fated aircraft, showing the events that brought each character to the plane that day. He meticulously fills in each piece of the narrative puzzle, bringing readers closer and closer to the truth behind the tragedy. The survivor story that takes place after the crash highlights both the mental challenge of living through a tragic event and the way that the media can build up and break down people in the blink of an eye. If I had any complaint it would be that the ending of the novel seemed a bit simple for such a complex build-up. Still, Before the Fall is an intriguing story that manages to entertain while urging the reader into deeper contemplations. 

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2021, 47)